


We Never Had a Choice

by NothingEnough



Series: 47 crosses (left 4 dead 2) [4]
Category: Left 4 Dead 2
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Canon-Typical Violence, Dialect, Gameplay and Storyline Integration, Geechee, Gen, Medical Experimentation, Medical Trauma, Military, Minor Original Character(s), Racism-caused Trauma, Scars, Tags Contain Spoilers, Tags May Change, Threats of Forced Impregnation, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Trans Male Character, Transphobia, When Fantheory Becomes Fanfic, a lot of fucking swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 09:20:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5042749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NothingEnough/pseuds/NothingEnough
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Folks, you're in the only continental US base which isn't overrun, and we didn't get that way by eschewing precautions." (post-The Bridge, trans!Nick, see tags for other warnings)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Coach wonders why he ain't dead. 

The 'copter flew them outta New Orleans and touched down several hours later on the Florida panhandle. He saw signs on the way down hinting they near someplace called Cross City. Coach had an uncle who served in Vietnam. Uncle Ernest carried an obsession with the US military like some folks carry their addictions, and it impressed on his nephew. Ain't no bases near Cross City. But the pilot and the four black-clad armed men who met them when they touched down took them to a base, all the same. Judging from the few rooms and the three flights o' stairs they had to climb down, it was the only structure in alluh Florida whose damnfool builders put everything underground. 

This shit is secret. Nobody outside the Army, or whoever runs this joint, oughta know it exists. 

So why are they all alive?

Maybe he's paranoid. He can't help it. Once their escorts demanded they turn over everything--their guns, their improvised weapons, the one bile bomb Ro never got a chance to throw--he got nervous. He ain't been unarmed since Savannah and that feels like ten lifetimes ago. He does not care for going anyplace without so much as a backup pistol, no sir and no ma'am.

The sign outside the room they're in now says DECONTAMINATION. He's seen movies with decontamination rooms, and either Hollywood got it wrong or this ain't no kinda decontamination he's ever imagined. The four o' them already went through the showers, so what the fuck do they need to be here for? 

This room is split in two. Him and his crew stand in a little space with a low wall and two doors, one that let them in and one leading to the resta the room, like a half-assed holding cell. The room proper is mostly empty. There's a leather-padded table, a metal cabinet next to it that's as tall as his chest and wide as a shoebox. There's a door in the farthest wall with three symbols he don't recognize painted on it. Nearer is a door clearly marked **AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY** in red stencil. 

Okay. He knows what's up. They got to see a doctor before they can get in the base. 

What happens if they ain't healthy?

Here they sit and here they stay. Their guard ain't talking, and nobody else feels like it, either, Coach included. None o' their scrubs fit. Rochelle's floating in a shirt made for somebody twice her height, and her pants are too small. Ellis keeps a hand on his drawers or else they'll fall straight down. Him and Nick are doing okay in that department, although Coach's shirt pinches his belly when he leans forward at all in his chair. 

He wonders if any o' them are thinking this mighta been a mistake.

The **AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY** door clangs, then opens. In walk three more guards and two folks in papery body suits. They both got those long rubber gloves up to their elbows, paper shoes on their feet. Like the men with the guns, like everybody but him and his, they got these hardcore masks on--little metal stubs that he guesses are air filters, plastic bulb covering everything from the forehead to the chin, attached with superglue, for all he knows. Their hair tucks under cowls attached to their suits. One white man, and one woman with deep olive skin and narrow eyes and heavy black eyebrows. She makes Coach a little less nervous. All these silent white men with big rifles scare the bejesus outta him.

Rochelle pipes up first. "Is someone planning on telling us what the hell we're doing here?"

It's the woman who talks, and Coach chides himself for assuming subconsciously that she is a nurse. She talks with the placid authority o' someone with rank. "I plan on it. If I were you, I wouldn't want to play ball unless somebody told me the score. I'm Doctor Castellanos, this is Nurse O'Brien, and we're what you might call the welcome wagon."

"Some welcome," Nick says.

"Folks, you're in the only continental US base which isn't overrun, and we didn't get that way by eschewing precautions. It's my job to clear you all before letting you into the general population."

"And if we ain't?" Coach says.

"You can't have survived this long if you're that stupid." Castellanos looks over each o' them in turn. Coach thinks he knows where her mind is going. She's trying to pick a patient who ain't gonna freak out and end up with two in the head. She skips over him and Ro immediately; Castellanos figures the black folks are most apt to panic under the circumstances, on account o' they ain't used to authorities treating them kindly. Her gaze flicks from Nick to Ellis. Right now, fear makes Ellis a child. If Coach didn't know better, he woulda guessed Ellis to be a very tall twelve-year-old boy. 

"You," she says, gesturing at Nick.

"No."

"Sir, with respect, you are not leaving this room until I certify you. Please allow Private Green to escort you to the table."

Coach may not like Nick much at all, but an empathetic pang o' fear plays through him anyhow. Nobody watched them in the showers. Coach's guard stood outside the stall, collected his old clothes and passed him the scrubs over the top o' the opaque glassy door. Nobody saw them undressed. Nick got at least two very good reasons to keep it that way.

But they ain't getting out anytime soon, and if they fight, they ain't getting out never. Coach and Rochelle watch very carefully as Nick rises, as the guard opens the half-door, as Nick walks towards the medical staff and the cluster o' guns trained on him. None o' the three make a move, even though nobody's aiming at them. The threat is unspoken and it works. Make a run for the door and we turn your buddy inna pink paste. Maybe that's why they all here, watching.

Nick sits on the foot o' the examination table.

"Thank you," says Castellanos. Her tone is so gracious, Coach almost believes it. O'Brien kneels by the metal cabinet and opens a drawer.

It goes about how he remembers a visit to the GP going, you know, before the end. O'Brien ticks off the answers to alluh Castellanos's questions: name, age, known health conditions, estimated height and weight ("the scales are busted," she claims). They take his blood pressure and oral temperature, and Coach nearly fools himself inna believing it's gonna be okay. Then Castellanos pops the stethoscope buds in her ears and asks Nick to remove his shirt.

"Rather not," Nick says, and Coach does a double take. He can't hardly believe that small voice came outta that loud man.

Castellanos doesn't beg, plead, or reason. She clears her throat, holds up the business end o' the stethoscope, and waits. One o' the guards cracks his knuckles.

He can't help it. He watches. If Nick gets a bullet or a knife in him, Coach will mark the motherfucker responsible and take them apart. No, he don't like Nick, something about that Masshole pisses him off, but he's Coach's Masshole, and it ain't gonna feel right if he dies. They'll be like that trio headed for the Keys. Functional but incomplete. He hears Rochelle turn her head and look, and he assumes the unusually silent Ellis does the same.

Nick yanks his shirt off like he's mad at it. Throws it on the floor. O'Brien picks it up, folds it, hands it to a guard who makes it disappear in a vinyl bag marked BIOHAZARD.

"... Sir, have you..." Castellanos doesn't know what question she oughta ask first. She leans down before Nick, cocks her head. One gloved fingertip touches a scar underneath his right nipple. The scar is a little shiny bowl in his flesh, devoid o' hair, lighter by three shades than his general skin tone, deep enough to hold a half-shotta whisky. "Do you recall how you acquired these injuries?"

"... sure I do."

"Can you please explain their origin?"

Nick stares at the nearest rifle-barrel. Then at the ceiling. "Those are from MSRA."

"They had to surgically removed the infected abscesses?"

"Yeh."

"Healthcare-acquired or community-acquired?"

"Prison."

"Were you convicted of a violent felony?"

"... Non-violent felony. Fraud, petty theft, manufacture and sale of fake IDs."

"There are nine removal sites," she says; O'Brien's pencil scratches quickly over the pad o' paper. Castellanos touches another scar, this one long and slender and almost invisible under the pectoral and the glaze o' two removal sites. "And this one, sir?"

Nick studies the damn ceiling like it's asking the questions. Coach shifts on his chair. His stomach is fixing to curdle.

"Double mastectomy and chest reconstruction."

If anybody in the room wasn't paying attention before, they sure as hell are now. Coach notes a coupla the guards turning to stare at Nick. And he sees something he never thought he'd live to see. He sees Nick give up. It's so fucked up, how something that oughta be all inward shows on the outside. But he sees Nick's shoulders hunch over, and his hands dig blunt nails inna the tops o' his thighs, and he sorta folds in on his own body like a shack collapsing under the sweep of a cat-3 hurricane. And despite how goddamn obvious it is, how much this fucks with Nick and maybe Castellanos oughta back off, the questions come all the faster.

"Did the surgeries precede your outbreak of MSRA?" 

"Yeh."

"Why did you fail to mention a history of breast cancer?"

"Wasn't breast cancer. It was reassignment surgery."

"I see. Are you currently on hormone replacement therapy?"

"Naw. Can't get my doc to call me back. Can you believe that fucking guy?"

"Did you have a hysterectomy or an oophrectomy?"

Nick's breath seems to click between his teeth. "... nuh-uh."

"Are you capable of experiencing menses?"

"What?"

"I'm sorry, sir. When you do not use hormone replacement therapy, do you have a period?"

"... don't know why the fuck that matters." His words are a long wind o' vowels and Ds, _doano waithuhfuk dadt maddahs_ , and Jesus, Doc, just stop.

Castellanos blinks. "It matters because you will have to have an OB/GYN examine you before I can certify you, and we'd like an idea of what to expect. Can you menstruate or not, sir?"

An extremely long silence. Nick's eyes are bluish holes. "... yeh."

"Christ Jesus," Coach mutters, and he puts his face in his hands. Their voices dwindle to a dull, distant warble, like hearing people you don't know talking in another room. 

This seems sick. Yeah, he knows some o' this about Nick. He figured it out before anybody else. Nick reminded him o' someone who had joined his girls' soccer team in '94, and ended up a husband and father in Detroit. Nick and he had the same anger, and fear, and what Coach's psych 1 teacher called "social masks". That don't mean he and Nick bonded or nothing. Being transgender didn't give him a license to be an asswipe. But God Almighty, this ain't nobody's business. Why the flaming fuck would the brass need to know this shit?

And Uncle Ernest, now fifteen years in his grave, rises up in Coach's mind and speaks. _Boy, you a fool if you don't know. There's one lady for every three men who lived through the Infection. They lookin' for that immunity gene, boy. They gotta fix this mess somehow, don't they?_

Coach looks at Rochelle. She knows. Her mouth is yanked inna frown, and she keeps picking at a bloody cuticle on her left pinky finger. He looks at Ellis, and he don't know. He stares over the wall at Nick and his eyes are all incomprehension and fear.

Against his will, he hears Castellanos say: "Call in Dr. Walker and let him know we need him now."

Coach has got to hand it to Castellanos. She keeps up that professional demeanor through the next hour and a half as, one by one, they all take their turn on the table. If Coach were locked in a room for that long with that many people who hated his fucking guts, he'd'a found a reason to escape a long-ass time ago, but she hangs on the whole damn time. 

By the time Dr. Walker asks Nick to put his feet in stirrups, and O'Brien hands her a speculum, Coach understands why the three o' them have to watch. It ain't just to put the fear o' God in them, it ain't just to keep them from doing stupid shit. Because Dr. Walker mighta addressed Nick when he said "let me know if you experience any pain", but he looks over his shoulder at Coach and Ro and Ellis cowering in their holding cell, and Walker doesn't push the speculum in 'til everybody gives him a nod. It's like... it's like they got this idea that a group o' survivors are one singular patient. Like bad shit went down if they tried to split up a group, or act on one part o' the group without the rest knowing it first.

That gives him an idea.

Coach bats cleanup in the decontamination league and, maybe on account o' years in locker rooms and getting cleared before a season, he's the only one who ain't in shock by the time he gets up on the table. He answers all her questions, barely flinches at the cool stethoscope on his chest and then his back, turns his head and coughs. He recollects all the meds he used to take better than when he still took 'em.

O'Brien finally presents him with his new clothes--they all got new duds, if you could call a whitish jumpsuit like a cross between a prison uniform and a baptismal garment clothes. Leastways it fits him better. He buttons himself in and Castellanos starts flipping through the nurse's notes, signing and dating and correcting, he guesses. She got an annoying habit o' clicking the mechanical pencil's eraser every time she stops writing.

"Hey. Doctor."

"Yes, sir?" She glances at him, back at her pad o' paper. Always sir and miss from Dr. Castellanos. Never names. That don't speak too well to their future.

"Are we in some kinda trouble?"

"Not to my knowledge. You're in one of the only safe--"

"Save it, Doctor." He hears the guards shift on their feet and resettle. He does not move a muscle apart from his mouth. "Now, you might be the last person any o' us gets to talk to, and you might listen, and you might not, but you are gonna let me speak. I'mma tell you one thing right now: you're goddamned right to be afraid o' us."

Castellanos forgets she's holding all that paperwork. O'Brien glances at a guard, waves his hand in a negatory fashion. Coach realizes that the guard was aiming at his chest.

"This is not about fear, Mr.--"

"Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. Y'all be terrified that we're gonna bring the Infection in with us. But that ain't all, is it? 'cause if I was y'all, I'd be shittin' my pants whenever I picked up a group o' carriers. 'cause I'd know anybody who fought their way across the Gulf Goddamned Coast and made it out in one piece is a force o' nature. If I was you and I had to take me and my posse in, I'd feel like I was letting four Katrinas inna N'awlins. 

"So I tell you what I'd do if I was y'all. I'd do my level best to put the fear o' Jesus inna anybody I picked up. I'd put 'em through the worst humiliation conga I could come up with so's by the time I was done, they'd be too goddamn afraid to fight back, and so's they'd be in no condition to notice how piss-scared I was. You mighta rattled us, I'll give you that. But it ain't working, and it ain't gonna work. I did not kill near a thousand zombies in the last week so some motherfucking Army chumps could take our fucking blood pressure at gunpoint. None o' us did. Now all y'all gonna take us to someplace with beds and feed us up, or y'all gonna have to fucking shoot us, 'cause I ain't waiting here another second while y'all sign papers and make up your damn minds. Doctor."

Her thick eyebrows furrow. Nobody moves. Coach silently prays the way his grandma taught him: _Aae doh Ie wark shru’ de whalley ob dem grayb yaad, Ie een gwoi’ skayed uh dem dead people--_

Castellanos says: "... I believe 39 is empty, isn't it, Private Green?"

"Last I heard, Doctor."

" I expect them to be locked up and fed by the time I'm done dotting all my Is."

_... fuh Ie know de Lawd, ‘E duh deh wid me._

***

Sometime between Coach's speech and them arriving at their cell, he senses the change. They shuffled outta that decontamination room looking like dogs that been beat. He enters the cell first, glances back, and sees a buncha assholes with guns and three badass mothers. This whole time, they all kinda traded the leadership role to and fro, depending on who had the best idea at the best time. Right now, Coach had had the best idea. He sassed the goddamn military, and he got what they all needed: a goddamned break. Ro and Ellis and Nick are looking to him. Okay. Ain't a problem.

The cell is long and narrow, like the drunk tanks he misspent a few o' his teenage nights in, two bunkbeds right up on each other near the east wall, toilet on the west wall. He guesses this place musta been like Fort Jefferson in its day, except the convicts at Fort Jefferson weren't a secret kept from the whole o' Creation. 

"General population", his entire ass. What general population? It ain't even a refugee camp, it's a prison. All this to get thrown inna fucking prison.

He accepts the food when it comes, eats the fake teriyaki shit they got outta an MRE without tasting it. He's too busy grinding away at their plight to taste anything. If he's the leader, then he's gotta act it. They can't stay here. Some hellish tension hangs in the humid air. He hears it like the distant scream of an oncoming horde. 

He decides on one thing right off: if the men with the guns come for Rochelle or Nick, he will fight 'til he's dead, or 'til the men with guns are. And if they ain't taken away? Well, they gotta have an escape plan, anyhow. If it ain't some fucked-up plot o' Castellanos or whoever that triggers it, it'll be a horde. He'll be damned if he's gonna starve to death in this cell after their guards all die. Not the least because he ain't dying in this stupid jumpsuit.

"What we gonna do?"

First damn thing Ellis has said since the showers, and Coach is just glad the boy can talk. All Coach can see of Ellis are the bottom o' his calves and his feet; he's sitting on the bunk overhead. 

"Tonight, we get some sleep," Coach says. 

"It's not safe to talk too much until we figure how how many ducks they've got in a row," Rochelle says. "We're probably being filmed. Or recorded. Or both."

"And there's our gracious benefactors walking the halls we got to consider."

"Yes indeed."

"... Shit." Ellis's bare feet disappear. It ain't right, not giving them shoes.

"All y'all eat?"

"Nick didn't." Coach can hear Nick snoring in the other top bunk.

"I'mma sit his flat ass down tomorrow and make sure he does," Coach says. "We do not need anybody hungry or tired. Y'all hear me? I know it ain't easy, but hell, we've all slept through worse'n this."

Rochelle smiles at him, and like the young'un finally speaking, he's grateful for any sign she's gonna be okay. Then the lights in their cell snap off, and Ellis kinda screams, and a guard hollers for them to shut up, and Coach lies back and worries that his speech mighta already wore off.

***

No way to really know the time here--no windows--but he got used to sleeping about seven hours at a go. He knows it ain't been that long on account o' when their cell door opens, his heart jolts from the strain o' waking and his head feels like it's fulla boiled fleece. His dry eyes focus slowly in the still-dark room at the short line o' guards. Plus another doctor type. He can't say who it is. He can't think.

"You," the doctor type says, and Coach recognizes the mumbly bland voice belonging to O'Brien. Sees O'Brien's gloved hand pointing straight at him. "Get up."

"... whuh?"

"On your feet."

He lurches outta the cot, the concrete cool against his soles. They're all awake. He can't see their faces. They make no sound. But he can feel their awareness, the slow rise o' confusion and dread and anger.

"We're going to take a walk," O'Brien says, and Coach realizes he's about to die. They're gonna walk him inna room with rusty-looking walls and no furniture and put him up against the dirtiest wall and shoot him. He got all uppity and nothing pissed off white men with guns more than an uppity target. Just don't do it here. Just don't shoot him here.

Ellis: "... you can't just haul him off like that, Jesus, he's--"

"Climb on down, babyface. You're coming, too."

"What the fuck?" Rochelle speaks like she can turn words into bullets.

"I'm not Dr. Castellanos. I'm not pretending to be some talk show host who just wants an interview. You two have a choice. You can get over here, where Lieutenant Flagg will fit you in handcuffs, and you can go quietly with us. Or you can stay where you are and be shot after, let's say, ten seconds. Up to you."

That ain't no kinda choice. He ain't gonna watch Ellis die, and he ain't dying here. Not here. Not yet. He's at the lieutenant's side in four seconds. Ellis makes it in about eight.

 _Fuck fuck fuck,_ Coach thinks as the plastic cuffs tighten over his wrists. _The hell we gonna do now?_

The nurse (if he is a nurse) and the guards form a cloud o' body armor and masks and rifles around them. Coach shuffles forward, trying to look less tired and confused than he is for Ellis's sake. He looks back just before they round the corner. He sees Rochelle not watching them--she's gone in some private world where she better be working on a damn good plan--he sees Nick glaring down from Ellis's bunk with real hate in his eyes--like he's got a plan already, and it involves taking O'Brien apart with his teeth.

***

Coach ain't no kinda medical expert, but he almost feels like one after a week o' this bullshit. He's gotten real good at exactly what he's doing now: laying in his bed and acting for all the world like he's unconscious. His arms dangle limp from the metal cuffs keeping his wrists fast to the sides o' the hospital bed. The beeping monitors, the loose gristly sound o' somebody filling a bedpan five or six beds down, all oughta scare him right outta his playacting. In a way, though, it's good that there's a feeding tube down his throat, and it's good that the unnamed patient to his right keeps shitting the bed.

The nursing staff here ain't military. Not like O'Brien or Castellanos. They're civvies. Maybe even pressganged civvies: do what we tell you, you get outta your cell and inna nice private room. Because some o' them don't know shit any nurse anywhere oughta know. One o' them stuck the IV inna muscle in his arm, and he had to scream blue murder 'til it got fixed. None o' these jokers got his dosage o' sedatives right. They give it to him, sure enough, but he reckons he's getting a dose meant for a man Ellis's size. Ain't enough to keep him down.

And a lot o' them gossip.

He lays chill and quiet and slack, and he listens. The man collecting the bedpan and doing mosta the talking right now, he don't understand what's coming outta his own damn mouth. Coach listens anyhow. Some shit about enzymes, nobody's having a bad reaction yet, for once it's all working the way the brass said it ought. Then the other nurse says the ass-clenchingly terrifying phrase "test this particular sample for signs of pancreatic self-digestion", and Coach almost swallows his feeding tube. Almost. He hears his heartbeat monitor speed up a little and slow back down almost at once.

Okay. Either alluh them got gallstones so bad he'd best get right with Jesus, or they're getting injected with shit that can make the pancreas eat itself. Good old Uncle Ernest died o' complications from pancreatitis. All the drinking and smoking had fucked up, what was it, the enzymes in his pancreas that were supposed to stay turned off had turned on, and they melted that sucker inna tallow. Occourse he remembers that part, that was the shit that scared him off more than one drink a day for the rest o' his days, don't matter, they still talking.

He hears them argue half-heartedly over who gets to prep the fecal sample. Then footsteps head to another part o' the room. Coach strains to listen, to get anything else he can use from their bullshit. After a few quiet minutes with nothing but beeps and groans, one "nurse" says: "This one's gonna be up first. Bet me."

"Tell you what, I'll walk you to the first bank we find in Cross City and give you the whole damn vault if you're right. It's not going to be him. He's going to die before he becomes a viable culture."

"Why's that?"

"Look at his chart, idiot. Last time he woke up, he reported severe abdominal pain. His pancreas is gonna go down before he'll be ready. Brass is keeping him hooked up to see if they can get a culture out of a vegetable."

"Well, that'd take a load off us. Lobotomize the lot of 'em. No more sedative duty."

"Right, but we've still got to worry about that now. You check all those IV bags?"

"I can see 'em from here. They're fine."

"They better be, or O'Brien will eat your liver with some fava beans."

"And a nice Chianti," he says, and Coach hears them laugh, hears the door creak open, hears the tab o' the handle click fast. They don't lock the door. Why would they? Ain't nobody in here in any condition to open it.

Coach slits his eyes, pretends to dopily turn to and fro on his pillow as he gets a look around. There are about fifteen beds here. Ellis is one bed to his left, completely knocked out, breathing steady and low. He's been that way since they hooked him into the IVs. 

When Coach fell inna fitful true sleep a few unknown hours ago, there were twelve "patients" in here. Now there's ten. 

All right. What does he know now?

They're being injected with a pancreatic enzyme. The enzyme is supposed to help them grow, or become, a viable culture--and they's only one kinda culture in the whole goddamn universe that matters right now. All this week (he thinks it's been a week, he mighta lost track of a day on either side) he been panicking about Rochelle and Nick. Thinking he and Ellis must be here so's they can make semen samples to be implanted into God knows how many wombs (please God don't ever tell Coach how many, he don't wanna know). Not a bad guess. And maybe he still oughta be scared for them, but... he mighta been foolish to spare no scared for himself, or for Ellis.

The ghost of Uncle Ernest speaks again, this time so loud it's nearly audible: _You forgot about Tuskegee, boy._

Yes, Lord, he did. The only thing that makes sense to Coach right now, the inescapable, is that the godfucking US military is using the last o' its resources at its last intact base to breed the godfucking Infection. Breeding it in him and his boy. 

He can almost feel the teeming lividity o' the virus bumping around in his brain and his blood and he's too damn scared to pray.


	2. Chapter 2

Coach spends the next two days or so preparing. He ain't praying yet. He ain't the kinda man to drop his faith when times get hard. God watched over his great-great-grandparents when malaria killed their masters, and when the time was ripe, God guided them to the islands where they made a free life. God watched over his grandpa in Korea and his uncle in Vietnam, and guided them both home. God watched Coach's people til they couldn't make do no more and then God held their hands the rest o' the way. Right now, God's awful busy, and Coach reckons he can still make do.

He does thank Jesus for keeping him about forty pounds overweight, even on his new all-liquid diet, and for sending him "nurses" who don't know how to fucking nurse. Other than that, Coach keeps outta God's way. 

One more "patient" disappears in those two days. They ain't added nobody else to the empty beds. The "nurses" act different on the second day. Whatever's going down, they ain't happy about it, no more chatting and no more Hannibal Lecter jokes. All Coach has are guesses, and he guesses they ain't finding anymore survivors to take up those beds, and he guesses the missing "patients" are dead, and he guesses the brass is mighty pissed off about it. And like anyplace else, he guesses shit rolls downhill and the "nurses," well, they live in the valley below.

He goes through what he'll have to do when his chance presents itself. First the handcuffs. Metal hooked round dense plastic. He pictures himself rocking back and forth 'til the bed-braces snap. Maybe. He pictures himself kicking the braces 'til they snap. Yeah. He might fuck up his knee for life, but he'll crawl outta here on his goddamn hands, if that's what it takes.

He's fairly sure he could yank out the tubes in his arms and the one going down his throat. He'll throw up mighty, but he can do it. He ain't sure if he could walk straight. He might not be sleeping all day on account of it, but the dope might make him too high, especially once he fucks up his legs breaking his bed. He damn sure can't carry Ellis. That's bad. The poor kid ain't woke up once in nine days. He might have to find an adrenaline shot someplace before Ellis can be any use.

So. Knock out the bedframe. Yank out all the tubes. Find adrenaline and probably some Ace bandages. Kick the shit outta Ellis's bed. Shoot him up and get him up. And what, Ellis just drags the goddamned braces from his bed off his handcuffed wrists the whole way? Naw. He's gonna have to find a key. Better. Kick his way outta bed and find a key, or some shit he can use to pick the lock. 

Then back to cell 39. They ain't leaving without Rochelle and Nick. It's all or none.

His internal clock reset a while back to match the rhythm o' days in this deathroom. He lays and tries to picture where they been, and where they gotta go, when that clock sounds a silent alarm. 

What's it for? He almost can't recollect, then it hits him. The nurses ought to have checked on them a good ten minutes ago.

Coach sits up. Dope nearly drowns his brain, no, he can't afford a dizzy spell. This is it. No way they forgot to check on their precious Petri dishes. Unprofessional they are, unpunctual they are not. This is it. Something kept them from coming. Gotta be something big. He don't know what or why but this is it, baby. Something in him insists he gets up now, or he ain't getting up never.

Adrenaline powers through the haze. He takes a deep breath, braces the feeding tube on the roof o' his mouth, hitches up his good leg. The knee pops from disuse. 

_Hike!_

His heel slams on top o' the left cuff, and praise Jesus he'll never know how he bent that far. Another kick, another, the clacking impact fills the room. Another and something in his heating heel gives. Blood paints the cuff.

"Fuck you!" Coach screams around the feeding tube and nearly bites his tongue bloody with the next kick. One more and a welcome cracking noise joins the grind o' flesh on metal on plastic, come on baby, one more and a gorgeous SNAP and the damn thing breaks.

He lies back for a second, gets his wind back. The hot ooze o' blood leaks outta the gash across his foot and puddles red on the sheet. Coach finds the strong in his left arm again, the muscle bulging under the fat. The fat saved him from the starvation and the sedatives, he's grateful for it, but now he needs that muscle. A rocking motion and the cuff seesaws through the rupture in the brace and he's free.

Ain't no time to shirk. The next cuff requires his bad leg and now, now he prays like his elders taught him, mixing Gullah from his grandma and English from his mama. _Oh Jesus, bad mout' dese buckruh, hold my brukfoot steady, let me lean fuh dayclear, amen._

_Hike!_ and his back yowls from the force. After four kicks, the skin on the bottom o' his foot splits to match its brother, and he has _got_ to find some goddamn shoes. This cuff takes forever. He's afraid to trust his body. After kick number ten, he bites the feeding tube and gives his leg over to God and SNAP and he feels like motherfucking Sampson.

Except Sampson ended up with ten tons o' building on his head. Not Coach. No sir and no ma'am.

He wrests his right hand free. The adrenaline soars and it's all kinda easy and painless now. He sits his ass up and looks around. Nobody else woke up. But the IV bags are empty. They's supposed to get refilled by the evening crew who didn't show up. No nurses alarmed by his racket. Not much light, except what's coming off the machines hooked up to the "patients".

No noise outside at all. 

That scares him green. He don't trust that quiet. It's apt to bite.

Out come the IV needles, a little more o' his blood shed before he even gets outta bed. He grabs on to the feeding tube, and something wrenches, and he pukes around it as it comes out. He spits the thin milky puke on the floor. No blood. Good. Good.

Both feet on the ground and he ignores the blood seeping out his feet. He stands. The cuffs on his wrist feel weightless. Okay. Next step. He's gotta find keys for the other handcuffs or he'll have to leave Ellis. He cannot kick through another bed. And he cannot leave Ellis.

He fumbles toward the door, tries the handle. It turns. He opens it, notes the red stencils reading TRIAGE and VISITORS MUST POSSESS A VIOLET PASS on the outside, and steps out inna the unknown.

Quiet. Dark. Nothing. 

To his right a long line o' doors ending in a T-bone. To his left the hall hooks a right. He consults his mental map. They were led here real careful, but he recollects some o' the turns. He saw nothing on the way you'd expect in a facility of this kind--no nurse station, no bank o' monitors for their leepers to track every movement. 

Uncle Ernest got the answer to that one. _You gotta go where you wasn't led._

He turns left.

When he hits the second hallway, he finally hears something. A dream of a sound: a klaxon. No soldiers. No Infected. Not yet. But they coming and he'd best be ready for them. He walks faster, leaving a red trail behind him. 

Two turns and he finds what he's looking for, an alcove where the staff musta sat and waited to check on their patients. A desk, the chair laying on its side on the floor, a desktop computer, a water cooler, a door with a a keycard lock. No bodies. He gets behind the desk all ready to search the drawers and finds what he wants on the blotter. A keyring sitting in a puddle o' coffee. Another keyring juts outta a drawer, one key in the lock.

Coach don't like it but he takes time standing there, trying every damn key that looks small enough to fit the locks on his wrists, til a tiny black one finally does the job. He makes a bet. This might be a Army base, but it's on a skeleton crew. They gotta be putting all their resources inna _some_ shit round here, but it ain't anyplace he's been yet. So he's willing to bet that the sad sack who left his spilled coffee and keyrings behind had all the keys for all their cuffs.

Back he limps, the klaxon fading to nothing when he turns the corner. No laughter yet, or shrieking, or gunfire. How fucking big is this place? How long did he and Ellis walk to get here? He'd been too lost in a mental graveyard to remember.

There's no less than twenny keys matching the one that released him, but he tries his first, and the cuff on Ellis's left hand clicks open. Then the one on the right. Coach draws the IVs out his arm, grabs the feeding tube, eases it out. He ain't found any shots. He can do that next. His conscience won't let him skip this part. He goes to the other nine men in their beds and gets them outta their restraints, one by one. Nobody's awake, and what the hell was in them bags?

He's fixing to pull out the last feeding tube when he hears a gagging cough. He thinks _Smoker_ and his body turns numb. 

The most beautiful voice in the world says: "Jesus Christ on a bicycle!"

"Ellis," Coach says, grins as he pulls the feeding tube out the mouth of an elderly Korean man.

"C-c... wha... whur'n th'shit are we?"

"We right in the middle o' the shit, my man." He tosses the tube aside and regards his companion. Ellis sits on the edge o' his bed, washed out and leaning too hard to the left, his hair a wild wreck o' curls. His deep-set eyes are glazed and unfocused, like he's trying to look at Coach but too nearsighted to make him out. 

"What is all this?" He sounds a little more with it. Not by much. It'll have to do.

"I don't know yet and it don't matter," says Coach. "Something's happening somewhere around here, and we ain't sticking around to find out what. We got to find Ro and Nick, and we got to get. I know you ain't feeling right on account o' they drugged you, but you gotta bite the goddamn bullet and work through that shit. I need you sharp. You sharp, Ellis?"

Ellis, ever so slowly, stands up. His thin legs shake but he stays upright. He tries out a smile. "Like a hot machete, Coach."

"Let's get where we're going, then."

***

This all went a lot faster in his head. Occourse, his thoughts got the luxury o' skipping micro-steps he can't ignore in the real world.

They retrace their path from the night they were led to the deathroom. It takes ages. Ellis tries, poor kid, but he can only go so fast before he gets dizzy and has to lean up on a wall, and Coach's feet hurt bad--he took too long, the adrenaline wore off. On the bright side, Ellis, for all his island-white-trash-idiot appearance, is so accustomed to the fear o' dying that he remembers a fuck of a lot more than Coach about the way they went. He lets Ellis stumble ahead, follows his lead. Whenever Ellis takes a breather, Coach puts both hands on the nearest wall and rises up on his toes.

By his lights, thirty minutes o' rights and lefts go by before they find a supply closet one o' his keys can open. He prays for guns and shoes. The Lord gives 'em first aid. He takes more time to bandage his heels. He's taping up his right foot when the unique noise of Ellis shaking himself awake reaches him. He looks up and Ellis tosses him a shot.

Now they running and the klaxon increases in volume, and when the little temporary boost wears thin, he hears what he knew would come eventually. The rough thick-thick of automatic gunfire. The unmistakable howl of Infected.

"They done goofed," he says under his breath.

"Damnfools deserve it," Ellis says, and wobbles around the left hook of a T-bone.

Coach follows him round the corner, and they mighta kept on toward their goal unawares, but he hears the last damn thing in the world he expects to hear:

_"Suddenly... Life has new meaning to me..."_

Mr. Billy Goddamned Ocean. Sure Coach knows that song. He laid Millicent Greenwood to that song. So where's the by-God radio?

He turns and looks down the right fork. Only one door at the end of a ten-foot stretch o' hallway, and a doozy it is. He recognizes the biohazard symbol painted on it, and can just make out some o' the three feet of instructions stenciled to its side, shit like **_NO_ ACCESS WITHOUT A WHITE PASS** and **72 HOURS MANDATORY QUARANTINE POST-ACCESS** and **_VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT_**. Most of the instructions are blocked by large, shaking letters written in fat Sharpie: **WE'RE ALL SONS OF BITCHES**.

Below all that mess is a body. One o' the guards. It takes a scary level o' determination to headshot yourself with an assault rifle, but the guard was one determined mother. Billy Ocean sings from a Zune hooked up to some little round speakers. Like the guard wanted some noise to help him pass the time, and left it running so as to... what... attract the horde? So as to die listening to Mr. Ocean?

The door is open.

"What the shit, Coach?" Ellis says.

He should keep walking. He can't. When he was a boy, he once waded through the savannah outside o' Tybee to see if he could spot any manatees. He once drank Uncle Ernest's moonshine to see what it tasted like (cherry). He had to know, sometimes. His curiosity combines with his bone-deep belief that God will protect him from permanent harm, and he does stupid shit.

"... Coach?"

"I'mma check out that room," he says, limping as he talks. "You get the rifle. If I ain't back in two minutes, you come after me."

***

Rochelle hates cowering, Nick doesn't like it anymore than she does, but they are fresh out of options. The air is thick with the ring of the klaxon, stinks with the not-distant-enough wreckage of blood and gunfire. Screams of the killed and the killers undercut the alarms. Lights are out. They're locked in their cell and nobody seems to think much of giving the prisoners a chance to fend for themselves.

They're stuck here and all they can do is cower in the far corner behind the bunkbeds, hope they don't catch any stray bullets with their skulls.

She's got a hand on Nick's shoulder. Her ragged nails dig deep. It ought to hurt, but he doesn't react. He's not a touchy-feely man. She figured that out the couple of times they fucked and he actually sneered when she clung onto him after. He didn't stop her, he isn't quite that much of a bastard, but he made it obvious it wasn't appreciated. Tonight (if it is night) he doesn't so much as curl his lip in disgust. She holds onto him and after a minute, he covers her hand with his, squeezes it like he's in labor and falling headfirst into the endless wave of contractions.

She shuts her eyes. She really shouldn't think too much about anybody being pregnant right now. It's too close to the neighborhood of her dread.

She had plenty of time over the nine days of their capture to assess the situation. Once, she went to the wall of bars holding them in and did her best to look up and down the cell-block. She saw maybe a dozen cells in here. A few empties. A few with one resident. One had two. Other than Nick, all of them looked to be women.

That night, she laid on the bunk above Nick's, and her brain went on a nightmare loop of the men with guns opening their cell and locking up behind them and starting the business of repopulating the species. The fear was so real it choked, the visions so clear she could smell the oil on their guns and how one pasty white guy used too much Axe. Logically, it couldn't be true. They'd probably strap them both down in some godforsaken laboratory and artificially inseminate them to make sure it took. But she thought about it and thought about it 'til she barely got to the toilet in time to throw up her supper. Then she crawled into Nick's bunk and they held each other, and she told him what lurked in her mind. He said they needed a plan. 

The plan was to attack the men with guns, force them to kill them both.

That was it. That was all Rochelle saw in her future. An unknown stretch of time with Nick in this cell, choking down food and jumping whenever the men with guns walked by, and eventually the door would open and they'd commit joint suicide by soldier. The only reason she ate at all was the terror that they'd notice her or Nick starving and strap them down to some table somewhere and forcefeed them. If that happened, the plan was moot, and she supposed she'd just have to wait for embolism or hemorrhage or the passing of her fertile years to arrive.

But now this. The plan's moot but for a different reason entirely, and in all the panic, Rochelle feels the creep of an emotion she thought had died in the past week. And she never thought the realization that the last stand of US civilization is overrun by the Infected would make her feel this way, but she feels hope.

Not a lot. Lord knows they're still in a shitshow. They have no guns, no goddamn shoes even, and they're locked in a goddamn cell, but at least she and Nick know how to handle the horde. The soldiers are another thing entirely. Let the horde take care of the Army and then she and he can work on the horde.

And find Ellis and Coach. If they aren't dead. Don't let them be dead.

So far, all Rochelle hears is the expected song of the Infected--the gibbering, laughter-like howls, the shrieks, the mindless punching and kicking of walls and doors and soldiers and each other. She finds it relaxing in its familiarity, her fear subsiding, and then, a sound takes her relaxation and spits it on a spike.

A deep lowing nasally bellow.

"Charger," they both mutter, and speak of the Devil and he appears, it sounds like one of the doors leading to their cell block explodes like a pipe-bomb and she hears screaming up and down the block. She can't see shit and couldn't even if she stood at the bars and shoved her head half-between them. She doesn't want to. Hearing is bad enough. It takes for-fucking-ever. The soldiers in the nearby block are either dead, or they decided to let the Charger clean up block 30 and they'll deal with it after. The base is lost, the prisoners are all witnesses to the loss, they've all gotta go. This way saves ammo. Cell by cell, they hear the Charger scream, knock straight through the barred walls, seize upon the inmate, and pound her to death. Rochelle counts the number of times that the din of a woman screaming _help please it's killing me help me_ suddenly cuts into wet splatter.

By the time the Charger comes into view, Rochelle counts five dead inmates. The fucker's massive battering-arm is tacky with red and white chunks.

"Jesus oh Jesus," she says, her hand squeezes Nick's shoulder so hard her nails cut his skin and he.

He wrenches free and makes a mad dash for the middle of the room.

It's just the kind of bullshit she ought to expect from him--Nick, who was more likely to give someone else his medkit than use it on himself, Nick, who would rather chew a few pain pills than tend his own wounds, Nick, who really hates his fucking self twice as hard as anybody hates him, all bravado aside--Nick hops right in front of the goddamned Charger, distracts it from Rochelle, and it gives out that bellow as it rampages into their cell, metal bars flying in a shower of heat and sparks. Nick disappears into the far wall in a cloud of dust and _fuck_ it's so loud him screaming and the Charger screaming and she has maybe ten seconds before Nick joins the rest of their blockmates in the great beyond.

She _runs_. Her vision narrows as she emerges from the giant twisted hole the Charger punched in their cell wall. The other cells vanish. All she sees is the door up ahead hanging off the hinges, she flies closer and the darkness beyond thickens with smoke and death. She knows no hesitation, shoots right through the busted doorway and her foot catches on a dead body. She falls gracefully over it and doesn't lose a step. Soldier. No gun. She peers through the stink as Nick's screaming turns into something skin-crawling and brutal.

There, a rifle, she grabs it and slings it over her shoulder as she reaches for another, thanks for getting murdered, dickhead, I'll take that gun. A rampage of footsteps ahead in the dark, they spot her, fuck them, she ain't got time for plain old zombies. 

Rochelle buttonholes back through the door and she readies one of her three rifles and he's still screaming, still screaming.

She aims at the door to their cell before she can see them and the Charger's got Nick's limp body by the chest and slams him into the concrete. A string of explosions sound from her rifle, licks of flame kick off the bars as she shoots through them, blood cascades from the damn thing's back, the din behind her grows louder. The rifle clicks empty and she throws it to the left and readies her second.

It takes all of the second rifle's magazine and a little of the third's before the Charger groans, lurches, dropping Nick to the ground, and she whips around and there they are, maybe fifteen gray and red faces all livid with Infection and the joy of the kill, she lights up the dark hallway with little bursts of flame from her smoking rifle and, like this is happening on TV and not her life, Rochelle notices how many of them are dressed in tank-tops and flip-flops and shorts and one skinny-looking teenager in a bikini.

She conserves but she's out and there's still three of the motherfuckers left so she unslings the rifle and gets to work. All she knows is the tightness of her fists on the hot barrel and the wet porcelain impact of metal on bone and it's done and she can't breathe can't fucking breathe still hit it til its nose flattens it's jelly can't stop not done never done don't

"Rochelle!"

Nick, oh Jesus, Nick. She drops the rifle. Her hands tingle and burn. She spits blood out of her mouth, wipes her face on the sleeve of her jumpsuit as she returns to their prison.

He's in a bad way--not as bad as he ought to be, sure, but he's alive, and she tests his ribs under her fingers and he howls in pain but there's no movement, no breaks. And for half a second, Rochelle can't make any sense of it. That Charger pounded the rest of their blockmates into pudding. Nick should be fucked up for life. Instead, he's got to lean hard on her to get on his feet, but after a few long seconds, he's standing.

Fuck it. Who gives a shit why?

"You pull any shit like that again," Rochelle says, "and I'm gonna leave your worthless ass behind."

"You'd miss me too much." Gruff with pain, somehow smiling.

"I'm about ready to unleash some suppressed aggression. We got guns over there. Your shooting arm okay?"

"I'll pull the trigger with my teeth if I've gotta."

"All right, player, let's go get in the game."


	3. Chapter 3

Once she and Nick get rifles and magazines, her consciousness breaks down into bits and pieces. If Coach was here, she might think more clearly; he was an emotional lighthouse, showing her how to keep her shit together in a storm of confusion. If Ellis had been there, it might have changed the few conscious choices she does make. He's not a soft man, or particularly vulnerable despite all the goofiness, but he does have heart, and she doesn't like to think of how he'll look at her if he ever knows.

But they aren't here. It's just her and Nick. Her, sick of being afraid and jittery on adrenaline. And him, already pissed off and wounded on top of everything else. 

It's just them and they will get out or die trying.

So they shoot their way through smoking halls, and when their ammo runs out, they step on the corpses of soldiers, roll them over, check them for magazines. And they don't look too closely to verify whether a particular soldier might be Infected or trying to ask them for help, whether the guy she just shot twice in the head was turning or choking. They roll back the way they came, heading for that motherfucking decontamination room, shooting anything that moves, pausing only long enough to decide if that shape ahead in the dark is Coach or Ellis, or a target.

At one point, she hears crying and her blood freezes solid. No flashlights to turn off. She looks at Nick. His shadow slows to a snail's pace. They walk when everything in her screams to run, the klaxon masking their footsteps and the panting hack of their breathing. 

The Doppler effect informs her which door contains the weeping sound. The door has an index card taped above the keycard lock. Writing on it. She sees the red marker just barely in the spare emergency light.

_ISOBEL CASTELLANOS, M.D.  
HEAD VIROLOGIST_

_WALTER O'BRIEN, M.D.  
RESEARCH_

"She a Witch or not?" Nick's voice hovers right by her ear.

"Don't care." She walks quiet nonetheless, they don't speed up til they turn two more corners, and Rochelle never knows if Castellanos was Infected, or dying of guilt.

Her next clear memory is walking through the AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY door, Nick on her heels, he fires behind them until his rifle clicks dry. The door can't shut behind them. Whatever pneumatic system kept it closed before, it's busted now. It bangs into the frame and bounces back open. She barely notices it, even though it hits her right on the hip, for two reasons.

One is the state of the room. Whitish emergency lighting attached to the blaring speakers provides her too much clarity. Bodies fill every inch of floorspace like carpeting in Hell's foyer. Two, maybe three deep. Lot of Infected. Quite a few soldiers. The only clear spot in the place is right here by the door. Her bare feet stand in a thicket of blood. The Army mooks had one last stand in this room before the survivors broke off running to die elsewhere. She can't even make out the shape of the examination table or the tool cabinet for all the gore.

Two is the shuddering death-dance the far door, the one they used to enter this place some centuries past, does in its jamb. Shimmy, shake, an undying loud BOOM, and a soulfucking roar she'd know anywhere.

"There zombies behind us?" she whispers.

"Oh yeah."

"Too many?"

"Yeah."

"Got any last words?"

"Nope."

"Me either," and the door shoots out of its frame like a grenade down the barrel of a launcher and the jamb ruptures as a Tank shoulders through.

Shoot and strafe, Nick and Rochelle rotate around the Tank, two moons caught in the revolution of an exploding gas giant. Shoot and strafe and try not to stumble over the corpses or it's over. Shoot and strafe and hope the zombies aren't drawn to this noise like they always are and pour in through the doors. Shoot and strafe and for a few utterly insane minutes, Rochelle dares to think they might do this, just the pair of them. Then her rifle dry-fires and she's got no more magazines and no time to find any.

She runs, doesn't even think about it. She leaps and her bare foot lands on the crumpled top of a skull and she almost falls but on she fucking runs, into the alcove where she'd sat on the floor and silently, miserably waited her turn. There's no door keeping her out. She stops at the jamb anyhow.

Every motherfucking Infected from here to Tallahassee has joined this goddamn party.

Nick almost crashes into her and she doesn't flinch. She hears the tearing rip of giant fingers plunging into concrete and yanking a piece of wall the size of a person free. She doesn't move. There's a goddamn wall of zombies ahead and a Tank behind and here she is, stuck in the middle with Nick, and she's too. Fucking. Tired.

She sits down. 

Nick ducks just as the chunk of wall flies through the doorframe and knocks back about ten infected. The floor shakes under her ass as the Tank closes in.

She looks up. 

The Tank appears, for a few seconds, to freeze midair. Her shock works like a TARDIS and fucks up the timestream. One massive arm raises to punch at the air, the other hand sinks into the wall, giving the whole beast leverage to fly forward. Maybe eight feet away. She sees the writhing awful aliveness of the muscle around its nonexistent neck and realizes it's still growing, it won't stop 'til the Tank is killed or chokes to death on its own weight. All this she sees framed above Nick's shoulder, he's between her and it. Behind the Tank, ten miles away, is the open AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY door.

Hovering midair between the door and the Tank is a mystical object with no place in this hellhole, all shining and glassy with a biohazard sticker on its side and its contents almost glowing the most gorgeous shade of green.

_"Puke inbound!"_

The world speeds up to normal. The bile jar shatters all the fuck over the Tank's swelling back and shoulderblades and it's already on top of her and Nick and something that feels like a Volvo built of feverish meat and steel bones crunches into her and off she flies into the next room, into the horde, she lands coughing and bleeding from her nose and her tongue and maybe her lungs but she's laughing. A few zombies stomp them but it's not the purposeful curb-stomp they use to actively murder, it's the thoughtless dash of the Infected drawn to the Tank's stinking hide.

She and Nick crawl up against opposing walls.

The ten-foot gorillafucker tries to get to them, but it's surrounded by a bunch of goddamn Infected tourists and that slows it down. Over its roar of infuriated agony and the noise of it slapping the Infected left and right comes the downright lovely sonata of two assault rifles short-bursting fire in harmony. 

There's a "Watch out!" from Coach and a "I'm watchin', I'm watchin'!" from Ellis, and Rochelle is still laughing but she may also be crying. She spots Nick behind a fluttering curtain of running zombies and he, well, he looks like he's feeling something other than anger.

The Tank disappears into the decontamination room. More shaking, more chaos, more waves of Infected rush past them, maybe they both look too dead to bother with, she can't tell. Then she sees the titanic rush of zombies suddenly part at the doorway in a spray of violence. An axhead snicks through the air, another joins the fray, after three good licks Ellis and Coach cut their way into the hall. They both look freshly baptized into some vampire cult.

Ellis swings that ax like he was born with it attached to his arm, buys Coach time to throw another bottle of puke in the Tank's direction, and the zombies all shriek in ecstasy at the vile odor and stampede on by.

She opens her mouth to call for help. Before she can, Coach and Ellis split up like they planned this shit out ages ago. Ellis axes his way through the unmindful horde, hands the weapon to a mostly-conscious Nick, grabs him by one wrist. Coach stands over her and takes both her hands in his. "'bout time we got outta here, baby girl."

"I know it," she says, and Coach drags her broke ass through the hall and into the showers just behind Ellis and Nick.

***

Coach jerks the wheel. The jeep heaves to the left. The ground under the tires changes from the ease o' pavement to the loose roughshod o' weak earth. He works the gas pedal, wincing at the agony flaring from his heel. The jeep cuts past the blocked-off breakdown lane. He guides 'em through the treeless flatland, round the ass-end of an apparently unending block o' wrecked and abandoned cars blocking the highway. He focuses up ahead, and he sees the blink o' headlights and hears the sound o' dying car-alarms as far as his senses reach.

God's been good to 'em, all the same. God guided 'em outta the Base, shewed him and his a route which mighta been heavy with Infected, but also with dead soldiers and, therefore, abandoned rifles and grenades. God guided 'em to the perimeter and a parking lot where the military kept a buncha vehicles, probably only used to patrol for more "patients". He had reckoned on Ellis hotwiring them an escape, but by the time they was trawling for a ride, Ellis had sunk deep inna silent shock, like the apocalypse finally cracked that funny exterior and hit him mighty. So God, in His unknowable wisdom, gave 'em Nick, who, occourse, knew how to hotwire and how to do it quick. And after a couple false hopes, God guided 'em to a jeep with a near-full tank and intact tires.

Coach drives. He's still the leader. He can feel it. He drives silently past two straight miles o' car wrecks. He watches the burning rubber and broken glass and twisted metal as he offroads by. He imagines this traffic jam growing outta a single Infected diving through a single windshield. He imagines the flock of Infected milling stupidly around their squashed cars, gazing uncomprehending on the hellacious mess they made, then... catching wind o' something. 

Coach knows he has a sense o' his crew that verges on the supernatural. He and Ellis had traveled based on Ellis's memory o' the Base for a while, but alluh a sudden, they had both moved with quiet surety through the hallways. They both knew Nick and Ro were a few hundred yards to the northeast, and they both knew where northeast was. He had shut his eyes at one point, and he swears he saw a glow in his mind's eye far ahead o' Rochelle and Nick, runnin' in circles and firin' their guns, right before he and Ellis heard the Tank. 

Why can't the Infected have the same sense? Maybe the horde just kinda knew or smelled or saw, or whatever, that an unInfected cluster o' humankind lay a mile to the east. Coach imagines the horde pouring down the highway and over the empty landscape, all shrieking from mindless joy, all guided to the Base. Guided by who? Maybe God. He's getting beyond his ability for abstract thinking.

He sees a single Infected, a white man in his sixties who looks sickly-gold-yellow in all the headlights, standing up on one leg near the breakdown lane. His other leg's missing.

Nick starts rolling down the window.

"Don't bother," Ro says. "You'll just wake up Ellis."

Nick shrugs. Rolls it back up. Sets his rifle back over his lap.

"Y'all getting any further with that map?" Coach says. He sees the end o' the traffic block on the highway, and he hits the gas a little harder.

"... I think so." Rochelle's words are punctuated by the crinkle o' waterproofed paper. He wishes they'd both take a cue from Ellis and sleep. They gotta be in shock. They both as bloody as he and Ellis, and he don't like how Nick leans hard to the right in the shotgun seat, forehead on the window and arms round his chest. Coach's mind goes hogwild telling him about every internal injury Nick mighta acquired. Ro, she ain't much better. She musta been slapped by the Tank, and while she dodged being crushed to death against a wall or a giant fist, she got a brownish scarf o' dried blood draped over her neck and shoulders. "I vote for a seaside town. Big enough for a docks. Small enough for there to be less of a fight. Horseshoe Beach fits the bill."

"Okay," Coach says, "I'mma need some directions in a bit. First, though, when we get there--"

"We get a yacht," Nick says.

"Why a yacht?" Ro says.

"I can operate it, for one thing," says Mr. Jack of All Trades. "For another thing, only rich assholes own yachts. The kinda rich assholes who caught the earliest choppers and are long gone. And the kinda rich assholes who keep their boats in good repair and fulla gas. We get one of those babies going, head south, bang a left at the tip of Florida's dick, boom, say hello to the Keys."

"... can't wait," Ro says.

"So can't I."

Not bad. He wonders if the mantle ain't passing from him to Nick, or to Ro. If it is, then there's one last thing Coach has gotta do before passing it on in good conscience. The jeep rumbles to and fro on the silty earth as he guns it for the now-closer empty highway. 

"... listen, y'all. I dun--I dunno how to ask this politely. Ain't even sure there is a polite. I gotta be blunt. And y'all gotta be blunt with me. When we get where we goin', we gonna have to rustle up some food, some medical shit, and some fuckin' shoes, 'cause I am about done with driving on two busted heels. But it's the medical shit we gotta talk about." Coach swallows. He feels dried blood cracking and flaking over his knuckles. "... at the Base. When we was split up. Did. Did they... did they rape y'all? Do we gotta get y'all Plan B?"

Never has he ever been so glad to be behind a wheel. He's gotta look at the improvised road, and not at the pair o' them. Coach hates his own cowardice, but he is just fucking fresh outta courage. 

He hears Nick thunk his forehead on the window. Hears Ro rustle the map in half. Neither o' them says a word, and oh Jesus he feels his heart tear to five bleeding pieces. He'll help. He'll get them Plan B, or the right dosage o' birth control that copies Plan B's effect, and he'll nurse 'em through the illness afterward, by God he'll do it, but they shouldn't fucking have to, and he--

"We..." Ro stops for a few long seconds. Coach cuts back on the road, the jolting ride relaxing to smoothness, and now he hears the quiet noise o' distress from the backseat--a nervous humming wordlessness--and he realizes Ellis ain't asleep, after all. "We're, well, we're not okay. Nobody's okay. But we weren't raped. I don't know why. They had all the time in the world."

"Maybe that's why," Coach said, quiet, "'cause they thought they had alla time. I dunno, and I don't rightly care. All that matters is y'all are okay." He believes her, immediately and with no question. From the way her shadow nods, from how Nick gives the same kinda nod at the exact same time, they both believe him.

Problem is, he's lying. He knows why. And it ain't got nothing to do with time.

***

The moon tells him to expect the sunrise in the next four hours. Maybe he'll be asleep by then.

Coach sits on the deck o' their yacht, a big white monster with the smartass name Instead Of Alimony painted on the sides. They was all dog-tired when they got to Horseshoe Beach, but Coach made them get up, raid a couple shops for food and medical supplies, shoot a few Infected along the way. He prayed for shoes and the Lord gave 'em flip-flops. Close enough.

Coach checked belowdeck just a couple minutes ago. This shit is boss. It has two small bedrooms and one big playroom for grown-ups with a big couch half-sunk in the floor, a fold-out bed, a bar, and a kitchenette, and praise God, it ain't been raided. He checked and he found the three o' them all sitting up on the couch, all asleep, Ro and Nick kinda leaned up on Ellis in the middle. Rochelle wore a bright sundress, his boys wore the loose shorts and too-big Hawaiian shirts favored by the yacht's former owner. 

They cleaned up good. They all still got blood under their fingernails.

On the floor nearby was a bottle o' Valium. Not long after they took the Instead Of Alimony outta the docks and dropped anchor for the night, they found what Nick called a party in a box. Bikinis for women smaller than Rochelle, coupla thongs for men the size o' Coach, three boxes o' condoms, and way too many drugs, street and pharma, for his liking. Nick said he could roll them a joint the size of a baseball bat. Coach vetoed it. They settled on the Valium.

Why ain't he took his?

Now he sits up on deck and the night is fine. The ocean hugs around him and reassures him o' their relative safety. Tomorrow, after they all get fed, Nick will input the general direction o' the Keys inna the guidance system, and GPS, unbothered by the end o' days, will take them close enough to catch Louis, Zoey and Francis on the CB.

So why can't he sleep?

Why should he? 

What's the matter, Uncle Earnest? Nothing to say?

Coach sits on the deck in a wide, comfortable chair. He seen something he wishes he hadn't. He was curious, and he thought God watched over him to protect him from the worst o' his folly. Now he feels his edges go grainy and crumble like salt.

Had he called the infirmary a deathroom? How childish. He stood in the true deathroom, the **WE'RE ALL SONS OF BITCHES** room. He told Ellis to wait outside and in Coach went. No lights in here. Took a second to adjust to the shadows, so his senses o' hearing and smell increased. Burbling liquid. Smell like formaldehyde and cheap wine and spoiled potatoes.

Then he saw.

Three full tanks and two empties. The full ones covered with some kinda grating. Each tank fulla a yellowish fluid and a body. Whoever they was before, they looked the same in death. Yellow-white blanks for eyes. Tongues swelling out their mouths. Bloating in the belly and the arms. Brownish-yellow slimy skin. He stared. Then he found the notebook jammed up under one o' the empties and, fool he is, he grabbed it.

He didn't have time so he flipped through it quick. O'Brien's notes. 

It all jumbles in his memory, but he recollects the jist. CEDA was working on a vaccine, no time for a cure. A vaccine sounded stupid to Coach 'til he realized how they did it. To get a vaccine, you need a shit-ton o' viruses. Most vaccines they used to grow in chicken eggs or cow blood protein. All the viruses that scared mankind, they all needed mammal tissue to grow.

They couldn't make Infection breed in dead tissue. Or animal tissue. But they got all these carriers, which O'Brien thought were some kinda new Infected, like the Hunters and shit, carriers who spread the virus where the horde can't go, then who cut the horde down before it wipes out all the virus's supply. O'Brien and Castellanos had a two-part plan. Part one, get the vaccine. They picked out carriers who could not give birth and injected them with some enzyme that wakes viruses up and makes them breed like lovebugs. Then, if the carrier lived through the massive viral load and the enzyme didn't eat their pancreas, they went in a tank fulla shit meant to feed the Green Flu til they had enough to make the vaccine. 

Part two, he already knew. Impregnate anybody with a womb and give 'em the vaccine. Not for the adult. For the baby. If it worked at the Base, then they'd pass on the process to other countries crawling with Infected.

Then Ellis hollered at him, and he heard light footsteps approaching the door, and Coach turned around and goddamn _screamed_ for him to get back, ain't nothing in here, and Coach walked out to the sound o' Billy Ocean's "Suddenly" turning to Men At Work's "Who Can It Be Now" and he pretended he hadn't just yelled at Ellis and Ellis, wide-eyed, pretended back.

But one day, Ellis may ask. And what will Coach say? _Well, Ellis, we done fucked the human race for good, and maybe that's best. That's what I seen in that room. That we're at the biblical end an' we still can't fuckin' figure out how to go on without killing a buncha people and raping a buncha other people. Maybe that Base woulda fell no matter what we did. But we fucked it up so righteous on our way out, ain't no way nobody ever gonna get to the research inside._

_An' I say good. I hope I die a natural death a long ways down the road, and I hope when I do, I look around and see a world empty o' people. If it ain't, then I hope it's on account o' the last of us finally agreeing with God that we got to stop fucking hurting each other like we a goddamn horde turnin' on itself. 'cause I can't fucking live with my conscience if it goes any other way, boy. I can't._

No. He ain't saying shit. They followed his idea at the right time. That made him the leader. And a leader don't just know when to talk like Aaron. A leader knows when to keep silent like Moses. Ellis don't need to know how close he came to boiling over with Infection. Nick and Ro don't need to know the vaccine probably woulda paralyzed 'em and left 'em still alive for whatever the doctors (or the soldiers) came up with next. None o' them need to know that they ain't just carriers, they Infected, it wasn't their inherent badassery that scared the shit outta the Army. 

They got enough problems sleeping. They got enough bullshit they gotta sieve through without so much as a goddamn therapist. They don't need this.

Coach sits on the deck and keeps his silence. He lets his flip-flop slide half down his foot, picks at the medical tape on his left heel. The long shorts fit him fine, the blue-and-red Hawaiian shirt bags around his chest a bit. He sits and observes the quarter moon. 

After a spell, he starts praying down the long-ass list o' things he oughta thank the Lord for.

The truth ain't one o' them.


End file.
